Natives banging gongs and hand-drums, shaking guard rattles, blowing whistles. Natives shouldering tall poles topped with lanterns or fireworks sputtering sparks and smoke. A small group blowing horns that curled around their bodies and flared into wide mouths above their heads. They were dressed in the long yellow shirts of pilgrims and mystae, in breechclouts, in ordinary clothes. Some were bare-chested, with white dashes and circles painted on their leathery skin, and wore wooden masks with long beaks, tall masks of straw and dried grass, helmets plastered with mud. They walked in solemn procession or danced and capered in ragged circles around the water clock, and everything was dissolving inside the thickening fog of pink, sweet-smelling smoke.

Ysbel pushed to her feet, knowing this had to be something to do with Goodwill, trying to ignore the chatter in her link as she scanned the circling crowd. A firework burst overhead with a stutter of explosive pops and silvery streamers floated down, falling across her head and shoulders, and a small figure was trotting towards her through the fog. The librarian, Clarity Forrester, dressed in his uniform-grey tunic and scarlet trousers, looking up at Ysbel, telling her that Goodwill had sent him.

‘Where is he?’

‘He asked me to tell you that he is going to meet the articulate bears, and wants you to come with him,’ Clarity said. ‘Also, he wants you to switch off the telephone in your head, so that it cannot be used to track you.’

‘I can switch it off, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t be followed.’

‘We have a plan to lose your friends. Come with me.’

The crowd closed around her and a mad storm of fireworks crackled overhead as she followed Clarity through fog and wild drumming and discordant music, ducking into a narrow passage behind two rows of stalls. Clarity stooped and lifted up a hinged hatch in the floor, gestured at the narrow shaft.

‘Where does that go?’ Ysbel said.

‘The Library, of course. Quickly. We have knocked down your friends’ flying eyes, but they will send more.’

It was a tight fit. Ysbel, clutching projecting bricks that acted as hand- and foot-holds, descended into a brick-lined sewer tunnel flooded by ankle-deep water and lit by widely spaced oil lamps. She had to bend double, one hand on the slimy roof to steady herself, as she followed Clarity. He explained, somewhat breathlessly, that he had been dismissed for helping her and Goodwill, but Goodwill had recently found influential allies who had persuaded the Chief Librarian to forgive his failings. ‘When he asked me to help him I gladly agreed. And here we are.’

‘Goodwill has an acute sense of justice. Where is he?’